Haunted by 9/11 Shoes

Number of people who had to die before I could make the decision to leave a very bad marriage: 2,603

I was busy the morning of September 11, 2001 getting my 22 month old son ready for a play date with my sister and her son. These two boys got on like a house on fire (uh, almost literally) and we had planned a fun outing to an urban farm to see some rabbits. It was a very nice, sunshiny warm day, much hotter than usual that time of year.

This trip would assuage any mother guilt we incurred over the next week. You know, like trading cards. I didn't give my son enough time to put his shoes on in his maddening slow manner before leaving the house and we both ended up crying. Traded for: one hot morning slugging around a mostly deserted third-rate city farm where he had the time of his little life. These are the little trade offs mothers make on a daily basis. The little buggers take over your life and you do the best you can, but dammit, we're only human, we do screw up.

My g/f called, she was at work. A plane just hit the World Trade Centre in New York. I was busy, I poohed poohed the news, big deal, a little bi-plane got it's wing clipped from the edge of building, that's not news. I hung up and got back to more important matters: Cheerios. But then I thought, well, why would she call with lame news, I respect her judgement, so I ran upstairs and turned on my tiny black and white t.v. I didn't have cable at the time but I did find a report of what was happening. I couldn't believe my eyes. Especially when it happened again. Gasp! Shocking! I. cannot. believe. what. I'm. seeing.

Even though my husband and I were basically enemies at the time, I called him up on his cell phone while he was working to tell him the news. He brushed me off as exactly as I brushed off my friend. He thought I was just being dramatic and didn't understand what was really happening. I hung up thinking, yup, you suck as a husband. I am the most blase women he will ever meet in his life. What had I ever done to have a track record with him of me being dramatic? It was just another showcase of how we were not a good match and how we were miserable in our marriage. What if I had called him up with a medical emergency, I'm sure I would have to call an ambulance and he would be zero help to me.

Another typical mommy child situation: my sister and I wandered around this hot little kid zoo in a complete daze while the kids howled themselves with glee. The dichotomy was just so surreal. I just remember the sunshine, an eerie feeling in the air and not being able to stop thinking about people dying in New York **while** having your child completely clueless about the state you're in, demanding juice cups while all you feel like doing is watching CNN for two days straight, without interruptions.

So I watched as much news as I could fit in, which was actually a lot, what with nap time and early bedtimes. Thanks to the Ferber method, my kid was a fantastic sleeper and my evenings were generally mine to do with as I wished.

The image that haunted me the most was seeing all the shoes just lying around NYC streets, mismatched. It horrified me, these empty office-style shoes, sort of like seeing the bottom of the ocean where the Titantic landed and there were pairs of shoes sitting in the sand, a testament to the person who was wearing them in that spot when they died, and finally the body got washed away but not the shoes. The shoes lived on, without their owner.

Anyway, those shoes changed my life.

I decided after seeing people holding hands and jumping from buildings to save being burnt up that you know what? Life is too short to live in misery. I was living a miserable life with my husband but neither one of us was taking any steps to end it.

You hear all the time people saying, hey, life is too short. But this was the first time it really meant something to me. I just kept imagining working at a dull job, living in a bad marriage every mind-numbing day and then one morning, BOOM, your shoes are lying on the pavement without you in them. All that misery? And for what? What purpose will it all have served?

The proverbial light bulb had finally gone off in my head. Or above it..., or whatev.

By the following weekend I had placed an ad on LavaLife, a company that runs a dating service online. I didn't have own a computer, nor a digital camera, nor did I own any digital pictures of myself, in fact I didn't even own any first-date clothes, but where there's a will, there's a way.

And, I was certainly not one to let being married slow me down in my new dating life.

That weekend I also called my husband who was temporarily working/living in another city that we as a couple were officially done. I was finally biting the bullet and having to now do the dirty work for both of us. I resented him to no end for leaving it all up to me. He's the one who treated me like crap, he hadn't slept with in about nine months and he doesn't have to lift a finger for the break up. I had to DO IT ALL.

Anyway, it went really well. I told him I'm done, I'm getting older, no time to waste, I'm going to divorce you and I'm going to start dating even though we are married and live together part time.

He wished me well, no problems, and told me: "Good luck to any man that would have you." Apparently I was such a loathsome human being that he was the only one in the universe who could put up me slash a Terri Hatcher monster from hell.

Worse, I had believed it 100% for almost thirteen years.

Self-esteem, where art had you been?

Well, it was a new day in the solar system people. It wasn't just Pluto facing a looming downgrade to dwarf status. Girlfriend went and got herself a new, better life.

I went on my first stomach-churning blind date on the evening of Wednesday October 31, 2001 at 9:00 p.m, exactly fifty days since the terrorist attacks.

A new day for the world indeed.

Ms M.

oxo